C.R.I.B.A.

Nobody expected it to have to fight.  Along a 70-mile front between the area of Monschau and the area of Echternach, American troops were lightly spread.  We were massing our strength in other sectors and the enemy was considered too weak to attack us.  And so inside the small towns of eastern Luxembourg, in Echternach, Berdorf, Lauterborn and the twin towns of Osweiler and Dickweiller, the officers and men of the 12^th Infantry loafed and enjoyed the local beer.  Outdoors, in the patches of hardwood forest and in positions sheltered by small hills, they made themselves as comfortable as possible in rain that drizzled all day.  During the night the enemy usually sent over a few shells and the regiment artillery wasted a few of its rations on him. 

In fog that lay thick on the sides of the hills and blotted out the towns, riffles and machine guns spoke and were answered.  A dozen small battles developed.  But because of the fog and the surprise and because their wire were cut, the units of the regiment did not know what was happening to the others units, nor did they know what they were supposed to do.  And so what happened during the rest of that day and during the days which followed might be taken as an example of what good soldiers do when they are infiltrated and cut off and surrounded.

For a long time after the battle began Colonel Chance himself knew little of what was going on.  The telephone in his command post had warned him at 9:21 to be alert; the division to the north was getting activity.  By 9:27 he had passed on the warning in his foghorn voice to all his battalion commanders.  At 9:45 Company "F" reported from Berdorf that it was being attacked by a 15-man patrol armed with automatic weapons.  This patrol later proved to be an entire battalion.  From Lauterborn Company "G" reported that it was being attacked by a squad.  This later proved to be another battalion.  The colonel ordered the light tanks guarding Radio Luxembourg near Junglinster to be ready to go to the aid of Berdorf and Lauterborn.

2) American prisoners being herded to the rear pass German King Tiger tank.  Prisoner toll was high in first few days.  Germans shot some, lacking time to send them to the rear.

3) Dead Americans are looted of equipment by scavenging German soldiers.  Man at the left had been robbed of his shoes.  Civilians suspected of being pro-Ally were shot or burned.

At 10:49 "E" Company was surrounded in Echternach.  At 11:37 Company "G" was surrounded at Lauterborn.  At 12:50 Company "I" was surrounded at Dickweiller.  At 14:15 (2:15 p.m.) Major General Raymond Barton, commander of the 4^th Division, issued the following order:  "There will be no retrograde movement in the combat team 12 sector."

By 14:25 the enemy had infiltrated between Osweiller and Dickweiller and attacked Company "L" at Osweiller.  By then all the regiment's forward Ops had been overrun.  At 14:45, 34 cooks, mechanics and radio operators of the supporting tank battalion were sent to Radio Luxembourg, left unguarded when the tanks moved forward.  The staff of Radio Luxembourg was preparing to depart.

At 15:30 Company "L" had two companies of the enemy on its left and right and had committed its last reserves.  At 16:20 "L" Company was surrounded in Osweiller.  At 16:51 the situation with the 3^rd Battalion was desperate.  "I" Company and "L" Company were surrounded, "K" Company was committed.  The Battalion CP was getting direct fire from enemy 88s and the battalion commander was destroying his papers and getting ready to evacuate.  At 17:21 the venemy was in Osweiller and it was too late.  Colonel Chance said over the telephone, "Hold on.  We'll get more help to you tomorrow."

At 17:29 the fog was turning from light gray to deep gray as darkness fell.  But by then the situation was clearer not only in this regiment's sector but all along the front.  The entire corps front to the north was under attack; five enemy divisions had already been identified.  Against the 12^th Infantry the enemy had thrown a full Volksgrenadier Division and his intentions were obvious.  He had surrounded and bypassed Echternach and was moving southwest toward Scheidgen.  If he could break through here he would ride Highway N° 11 down to the city of Luxembourg, then drive his panzers eastward into the Ardennes as he did in 1940.

Between the enemy and his objective stood the battered, undermanned 12^th Infantry Regiment with what reserves the division could send to its aid.  At nightfall the situation at Berdorf and Lauterborn was still what was known as "Fluid."  Weary Colonel Chance wiped his glasses and jotted quickly in his notebook, "This is the last action as of 16 December 1944."

Captured U.S. equipment, including a jeep, is inspected by German soldiers in Belgium.  The mud under their feet is evidence of the plane proof bad weather, one of the greatest allies of the German offensive. 

At General Eisenhower's headquarters, there seemed no particular reason on the day after the start of the new offensive for a change in the General's routine: up a little after 6, breakfast of an egg or sausage topped off with the hominy grits which have been flooding in to him ever since Bing Crosby broadcast that the general has a fondness for them.  Where he lives is of course a military secret, but he had just returned from a 4000-mile trip to the fronts and there were tired lines under his snapping blue eyes.  He paced back and forth before his fireplace when I saw him late in the day, his ruddy face a little brighter than it was last summer, a few extra pounds around his midriff because he hasn't had time for riding.

The second decision was whether to use the British army and the airborne troops in England to try to turn the Siegfried line and the Rhine or whether to concentrate on taking Antwerp quickly.  Ike gambled again.  One third of the operation succeeded-we took one of the three Rhine bridges-but the two bridges that the British could not hold cost Eisenhower his gamble.

All strategy, like poker, is a gamble based on knowledge of your own hand and speculation about your foe's.  Von Rundstedt made a smart bet when he threw a pile of blue chips into his surprise offensive.  Rommel had done the same thing at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.  In each case the German commanders achieved surprise.  We didn't know they had the stuff to do it with.  Yet in each case the German move and its advantages were obvious: throw the other man off balance, mess up his supply, make him take time to regroup and re-supply before he can hit again.  Then meanwhile, maybe he'll fall out with his friends or maybe you can think up a strange and wonderful new toy, possibly one whose name is prefixed by the letter V.

By Sunday morning 60 miles of the front had been overrun and the corridor at its base was 60 miles wide.  One U.S. division which fetched up 30 miles to the rear with a complement of 200 men reported that seven German divisions went through it in 24 hours.  Through the corridor thus cut by the infantry the panzer divisions poured, trying to break up and encircle our forces, racing toward Liége and the Meuse.

We knew that the enemy was bringing heavy reserves into the Trier area, but we had observed these reserves going both north and south from Trier and we thought he was reinforcing other sectors.  Instead, for every division that went north or south probably two divisions stayed near Trier.  Finally, the German forces concentrated without using wireless (which could have been picked up) and they took advantage of thick weather that kept our aerial observation at a minimum.  Von Rundstedt used his best panzer divisions, some of his best SS and infantry divisions and the pick of his Volksgrenadiers.

The enemy plan looked suspiciously like 1940 with some desperate innovations.  There were the same parachutists dropped behind our lines to try to cut communications and spread panic.  But this time they wore American uniforms and were subject to shooting as spies.  And this time some of them had orders to murder our top commanders.  There were the same appeals to the fifth column, the same rumors spreading through the civilian population.  (But this time they did not work.)  The enemy used tactically every V weapon in his armory.  And he may yet use gas.

First stage of the drive began on December 16 when tanks advancing out of the Siegfried line fingered through the forests of Belgium and Luxembourg.  One spearhead broke through below Monschau but was kept from turning north by the U.S. defense around Malmedy and Stavelot.  Sheltered from planes by low-hanging clouds, the tanks moved in dense, powerful masses.

In second stage the Germans drove a great triangle into Allied lines, almost to the Meuse.  Reinforced Allied troops began to press at the sides, but they were unable to dull the spearhead at the tip.  The break came when the weather cleared.  For the first time planes pounded the triangle and the road behind it.  The Germans had to break up their tight tank formations

In the third stage the German drive lost momentum.  Allied troops, including fresh units, were in position around the triangle and were squeezing it hard.  General Patton's tank-strong Third Army relieved besieged Bastogne and narrowed the corridor behind the German spearhead to a distance less than medium artillery range.  For the moment the Germans had lost the initiative.

The possible objectives of the German drive were Paris, the Channel or Antwerp.  At the end of last week the Germans were possibly regrouping for new attacks and had already attained their first objective:  the lessening of Allied pressure on other parts of the front.  The Allied had also lost a lot of men and equipment, but so had the Germans, who could afford it less.

We did not react as he probably hoped we would.  We threw in a couple of divisions to try to slow his advance, but after that we did not try to halt him frontally.  Instead, we prepared to attack him on the flanks.  While Patton's columns rolled day and night from the south to hit his southern  flank, the division in northeast Luxembourg fought desperately to keep that flank from caving in.

But beyond Berdorf the enemy was advancing southward up the schwarze-Ernz River valley toward the town of Müllerthal.  An antitank gunner on outpost duty watched five enemy companies move through the valley.   A task force was formed to intercept the enemy on the high ground south of Müllerthal.  When it met this task force the enemy turned west and was engaged by another division.  What happened in this battle the men of the 12^th never knew but they saw no more of this enemy force.

At 13:30, 200 enemy infantrymen were sighted near Scheidgen.  At that time the defense of Scheidgen and Consdorf to the west depended on one medium tank, several tank destroyers and a handful of cooks, stragglers and MPs.  A ravine to the west of Consdorf was blocked by the tank and seven infantrymen.  Then a dismounted antitank company took the high ground dominating the two towns and the situation for the moment was saved.

By the end of December 17 the 12^th had formed the semblance of a line on its right and left but in the center, where the enemy was pushing from Echternach toward Consdorf and Scheidgen, the situation was still fluid.  On the morning of the 18^th a task force counterattacked toward Scheidgen.  Another task force counterattacked toward Lauterborn and Echternach.  Two tanks got into Echternach and found Company "E" in the cellars.  Company "E" reported that it had received orders from General Barton that there would be no retrograde movement, that it had received no contrary orders, that it had killed 150 Germans, that it would therefore stay and kill some more.  The tanks left.

By the end of the 18^th the situation looked better.  The 12^th had retaken Osweiler and Dickweiler; isolated companies still held out in Berdorf, Lauterborn and Echternach.  But one company was down to 50 men, another to 29.  The night was quiet in Echternach.

On the 19^th our tanks again reached Company "E" in Echternach.  They helped it to reconsolidate its positions and get locations where supplies were later dropped by air.  By the time Company "E" got its orders to withdraw, the tanks had gone, the enemy had moved in armor and the tanks could not get back.

On the morning of the 20^th a fresh attack came.  "A" and "G" Companies retreated from Lauterborn to the vicinity of Michelshof.  "B" and "F" Companies moved from Berdorf back to new lines near Consdorf.  All attempts to relieve Company "E" in Echternach failed.  The 100-odd men there were trying to work their way out in small units.  Few succeeded.

On the 21^st the enemy attacked all day.  Sixty cooks, orderlies and MPs from Division Headquarters were attached to a battalion to reinforce the new line at 13:30 on December 22.  A regiment of the enemy attacked the center of the 12^th's line near Michelshof.  The defenders held their fire while they counted 158 Germans advancing across an open field.  When they came near, tanks, TDs, machine guns, engineers and infantry opened fire.  Three Germans crawled away.  There were 154 dead.

That was the last concentrated attack.  Wrote Colonel Chance: "At close of day combat team BLANK took a line just short of the line we held.  From 22 December enemy activity was uneventful.  Combat team 12 was relieved of its sector by combat team BLANK, BLANK Infantry Division, about 16:00, 24 December 1944."

The Luxembourgeois say that St Peter is a German and St Peter is God's weatherman.  On the second day of the attack there was half a day's good flying weather and on that day the Luftwaffe flew more than 450 sorties.  Although the effort cost it at least 95 planes and pilots, the German air force did keep our air forces from interfering too greatly with the advance of German ground troops.

Then the weather closed in again and for five days thick for clung to the ground like a smokescreen.  For those five days the enemy moved without hindrance from above, and he moved deep into Belgium.

But it was not his westward drive that worried our generals as much as his pressure on the sides of his corridor.  They staked everything on our ability to close the corridor from the sides.  General Patton's Third Army was making one of the fastest moves in military history-helped also by the heavy fog that hid everything from the air.  By Friday, December 22 Patton was ready to attack.

That Friday began with a snowstorm, which Major General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, commander of the 9^th Air Force, greeted with a wry crack.  "D'ya think," he said, "that Hitler makes this stuff?"   Late in the day he called in his weatherman, Major Stuart J. Fuller, and asked, "How much longer is this going to last?"

The major thought the weather might clear by the 26^th.

"Suppose it's clear tomorrow?"  said Vandenberg.  "What are you going to say?".

The major murmured that he would probably have to shoot himself.

The next day it was clear.  Of the great air battle that was fought in the following days there will be many stories written, when all the returns are in.  As I write this the battle is still going on and so I can report only the Allied objectives and the measures of success to date.